This may be a personality test: When you rediscover that venality, greed, cowardice and base politics have been going on forever, not just this election season, does it make you feel worse?
Or do you feel vaguely encouraged, that such failures of character are the human condition, and democracy has managed to limp through the relentless demolition derby of cynicism?
I prefer the latter. It helps when you can filter those feelings through a terrific, timeless movie like “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” I’ve had the fortune and misfortune this season of covering the U.S. Senate race, with an appointed incumbent senator, no less. So watching the trials of Jimmy Stewart as the naive appointed senator fighting monstrous powers in the capital and his home state is an election- year treat.
Not that Sen. Michael Bennet is Jimmy Stewart. Sen. Smith collects dimes from Boy Scouts into small envelopes; Sen. Bennet counts his contributions by the millions. But the arguments over who votes for what reason, and who benefits, are universal. In “Mr. Smith,” Frank Capra sets up a surprisingly dark view of how money will always undermine true democracy.
In the film, the powers of an unnamed mid-American state appoint young Smith to do their bidding. He’s star-struck for a while but soon figures out the game. With the help of a true-blue Senate secretary, Jean Arthur, Smith figures out how to filibuster his way to the truth. Could it be any more relevant now, as both parties are tangled up and deadlocked over the use of filibuster threats in the modern Senate?
People who haven’t seen “Mr. Smith” imagine it as sticky Frank Capra vanilla pudding. It’s not, by a longshot. The bad guys are everywhere, and Capra’s own cynicism is almost overwhelming (thugs run over Boy Scout wagons distributing a Smith defense!). The fact that Mr. Smith wins in the end doesn’t erase the challenges people like him face on the next vote.
“Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”
Rating: Any rating would be largely irrelevant; it’s a G- level film aimed at more mature audiences.
Best suited for: Teenagers and black-and-white-film fans ready for a classic underdog story.
